


Kukushka

by Ccroquette



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Drama, Gen, Historical, Winter War, sniper!Finland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 22:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ccroquette/pseuds/Ccroquette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They call them kukushki because they rain death from the trees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kukushka

They call them kukushki because they rain death from the trees.

They hide and they wait and when the opportunity presents itself they shoot, and Tino is always among them. Always there.

He is the best at hiding because he was born in snow and ice and he knows this land - feels this land, breathes this land - because he _is_ this land _and it is his_ , no matter what some bastard in Moscow wants to say. It knows him, and it looks after its own.

Tino hides, and he waits. It is difficult to have patience when every day there are fewer bullets. Every day his arm grows weaker, and every day his side hurts more, but every day he waits before he strikes. He waits, because waiting means that every bullet is worth something when he fires it. Every bullet counts.

As for shooting, he’s proficient at that too.

Today, though, is different. Today he waits not high in the branches but hidden closely on the ground. Today he has a singular job to do and today he is alone.

He works best alone.

For hours he lies pressed to the ground on his belly, mouth full of snow so that no one can see him breathe. He watches, and waits, and there are a few, very few, opportunities - but not the one that he’s been looking for. He will not risk himself on a lesser target. Not now.

It is not like anything he’s met before. This time there is no Empire at his back to save him, no chance for sovereignty inside defeat. No nothing, except a daring general and an unofficial offering and the goodwill wishes of a world that won’t bring itself to interfere.

It is an altogether different game and the stakes are altogether greater, and it is because of this that Tino waits.

Tino waits and he watches and finally the daylight is dying and his quarry hasn’t shown. Isn’t here, he realizes with a silent curse, and he must move. Tino extricates himself, carefully, and vows a thousand times over that before this war is through he will find him and give him exactly what it is that he has coming.

He does not find him on the homeward journey.

He finds, instead, one of his own soldiers slumped against a tree, reeking of blood and shit because his guts have been shot out. Still breathing.

“Venäjä,” the - father, brother, farmer - soldier coughs through red-stained lips.

“Missä?”

He points.

“Kiitos,” Tino says, and, smiling mercifully, leans over to slit his throat.

They call them kukushki, but today he has delivered death on the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> Translation, etc:
> 
>  _Kukushka_ (pl. _kukushki_ ) - Russian for 'cuckoo.' During the Winter War this also came to refer to Finnish snipers, who would hide in wooded areas and be very, very good at their jobs.


End file.
